Bran - Bild vom 25.11.57, 1957

CommentaryIn the late nineteen-forties, K. O. Götz developed his informal, heavily gestural style of painting by experimenting with different printing techniques. He tried priming his canvases with an extra layer of glue and after painting on top of this, proceeded to remove or redistribute the paint in much the same temperament, which he did using brushes and other utensils of his own making. He invented his hallmark »raked paintings« at first in bold black, and later with blue, yellow, and red mixed in. As can be seen here in ›Bran – Bild vom 25.11.57‹ (Bran—Picture from 25.11.57), these works are not about simplification; rather, they are about modeling pictorial space and the didactic exploration of all the many different ways of approaching one specific theme, namely the interaction of »figure« and background—that is to say, the composition of single works executed in a similar style, but in different orders of magnitude. Over the years, Götz developed a fascinating scheme of sweeping diagonals and swirling vortices, which he then reworked in endless variations as spontaneous as they were dynamic.